As an evolution direction of 3G technologies, LTE (Long Term Evolution) has become a mobile network evolution target of global mainstream mobile operators. The international standard organization 3GPP has put forward a complete new-generation network evolution architecture: an EPC (evolved packet core) architecture.
The EPC architecture mainly includes an MME (mobility management entity), an HSS (home subscriber server), a PCRF (policy and charging rules function) unit, and many gateways such as a TGW (Trusted gateway, or trusted access gateway), an SGW (serving gateway), and a PGW (packet data network gateway). A policy library is set in each gateway, and is used to perform policy matching for a packet service. As shown in FIG. 1, when receiving any packet, a gateway may perform packet inspection based on an OSI (Open System Interconnection) model layer 3 IP address or an OSI model layer 4 port number, and an OSI model layer 7 protocol number or application type. Then, the gateway determines a to-be-executed packet processing action such as charging, QoS control, bandwidth management, redirection, or URL filtering from a policy library according to a protocol/application type and included key field information that are obtained by means of packet inspection, or a system-defined rule. Finally, the gateway executes the packet processing action corresponding to the packet.
However, with increasing requirements of users for the Internet, a gateway is deployed closer to the users. As a result, there is a dramatic increase in a gateway quantity, for example, an increase from one PGW per province to one PGW per county. Therefore, configuration, updating, and maintenance of policy libraries in many gateways cause a large amount of homogenous maintenance work, and consequently network operation and maintenance costs are increased.